We just change the units. 1000 milibits = 1 bitcoin.

The user support is around 8k, and miner support is around 5k.

5k is nearly 1/3 of current price. This would be a massive crash already.

Next time dont go short, go long.

You are not counting the massive adoption from recent months. Coinbase is adding thousands upon thousands of new users everyday, and even if they dont count for most of the money, theres already that idea that bitcoin is the new gold and people need it for protection against the government.

I remember the crash of MtGox. I didnt had any bitcoin at that time yet, because there was no use case for it. I only bought my first coin when Mega accepted it... I was interested in their services and wanted some degree of privacy, and so it happened. Now the use cases have multiplied, and there are people buying cars and houses with bitcoin, paying their bills, receiving wages... this is leading to massive adoption.

It was not the same at the time of MtGox, when it looked more like a collectible card than a real currency. MtGox was also centralizing bitcoin, now we have dozens of exchanges. You have to consider these aspects before saying there will be another multi-year bear market. A bear market like that is only possible in a centralized ecosystem, but the ecosystem have become more and more decentralized since MtGox. Think about the ICOs, all those altcoins, this was very niche at that time, now its spread around hundreds of parties. How can Wall Street control it all of a sudden? The only way they can do that is if they buy so much bitcoin that they have at least 25% of all the coins mined, and I doubt they will find it on every exchange, because people are hoarding it, they are taking it out of the exchanges and putting in cold wallets, increasing demand. Also, if they try to short it, using their futures mechanisms, this can provoke a bull run on the altcoins, and some people might hedge on them, bringing the money back to bitcoin when it reaches the bottom. Now imagine a future market for every single altcoin out there, this will take years, and until then, bitcoin will rise to Mars, because the adoption is going mainstream.

I can HODL my coins dearly in my wallet, but I cant HODL the trembling hand of a n00b.

We need to spread the HODL cult to the masses. Thou shalt not buy fiat money.

Can you feel the lack of gravity? We are already in space, theres no floor anymore.

Well, for the self-fulfilling "prophecies" to work, they need to hold some thousands of bitcoins, and act like whales.

They just buy all the positions, which pump the price, then make a future contract speculating a fall to half the price. They use 10x leverage for the contract, then come back to the bitcoin exchange, dump all their coins by half of what they paid, and if they hit it, they receive 5x of what they spend. If they hit it, of course, if not they lose the bet. At least this is what I understood of it.

$16500 seems to coincide with sunday, which is the opening of CBOE futures.

Shouldnt the correction be to 0.618 level?

At least this is what it looks like historically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J19gwjumJ8

The 0.618 level in your retracement is between 6k and 7k.

Also, notice theres only one red candle above it, which can point out to institutional investors joining the market.

There will be hedge funds betting for and against bitcoin.

Certainly the one from Novogratz will bet on a rising. And the ones lead by GS and JPMorgan will bet on a fall.

But we dont know for sure how this really works in its internals. Basically they use leverage in CME for their bettings, but when buying real bitcoin, they will buy in exchanges like Bitstamp and hence they can only do what a whale would do.

In gold, they keep the price down, because gold is held in custody by the State and the banks. They have a monopoly on it. Now for bitcoin, 90% of it is concentrated in the hands of the whales, which are 1% of users. So those funds will keep buying lots of bitcoins to increase the price first, so that they can tempt the whales to dump their stashes, and only then they will short what they have bought.

I was fearing a short right off the bat, because we never know if these funds were hoarding bitcoin, secretly and for a long time, turning them into whales themselves. But most probably is that they werent doing that, as their criticism points to a regret of not buying (as most coinhaters do, they always act emotionally). So maybe the price will go up until it reaches around 30k and then one or two whales try to dump to buy a truck full of lambos. Only then we will have a crash, going back to 10k levels.

Not if your consider the doubling each four months. If you double the price each four months, it will arrive at 500k by second half of 2019.

It will not. What it will do is to turn bitcoin even more volatile than what it is now. Pumps and dumps will be massive due to money flowing from hedge funds.

Theres no floor anymore, OP.

We are floating in space already.

If it go to 6k, it will only last 10 minutes. People will fill it up very quick.

No, because they are gambling that the price would go down, so they will receive 10x what they sell, which, if they sell for half of what they paid first, would actually be 5x of what they buy.

In leverage they borrow money from CME, and use it to speculate that the price will go down, in those kind of self-fulfilling "prophecies". If they are buying bitcoins right now, they just dump it right before the contract expires, take the damage from the bitcoins sold, and the profits from the contract, which is made entirely in cash.

But this will only affect the price if people panic, since most of the coins are not on the exchanges, contrary to gold which is held in custody by the government. Hence the need to inform people about the mechanism, so that they prepare psychologically for it.

I know there are many new users joining Coinbase, but we dont know if most of the money are coming from them or from those institutional investors, who are buying bitcoins to dump it and take profits from gambling in futures.

However, as they short it, they will pump it again, even more so this time because they will have even more leverage. They will rinse and repeat this process using borrowed money. So expect a rise to 25k in January, maybe 70k in March.

Sometime ago, I tought it would take months or years to reach such value.

Now I think 70k is very possible... in March.

I guess we will have a crash now in the second half of December. I'm expecting a fall to around 6-8k, maybe even 4k. This will be caused by futures speculation, which will use leverage. Those hedge funds are probably buying bitcoin right now, to dump it after some time and take their profits with their gambling.

But the price will go much more higher after that. I'm expecting something around 25k by the end of January. We will have such swings that the window to buy will be very small.

Governments will also be buying it. They are going to make reserves of it, as the price will skyrocket after some time.

Just hold your fucking coins.

6k?

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leverage.asp

Leverage is playing with money you dont have.

You just borrow it from the house and put it in some asset.

In a bear market, leverage is used to short positions quickly.

But as it happens with gold, the house need to hold the asset in custody so that shorting would affect its price.

Notice the constant pump recently, only green candles and no correction. This is not the behaviour of our usual whales.

This is the behaviour of someone who received a green light to buy and is covering a lot of positions, rising the price up. In other words, the hedge funds themselves are buying bitcoin to hold it in custody, as digital gold.

However, the difference here is that most gold is held in custody, by States, by banks and stock markets, whereas bitcoin is hodled by its users. Most of the bitcoins are not on the exchanges, and the limited supply keeps the price rising.

Now, lets imagine a hedge fund buy one million dollars of bitcoins in Bitstamp, for example (I dont know if it is the fund or CME itself who buys it, but lets suppose its the fund). They hold it in custody, then bet for a fall in CME, using 10x leverage, that is, they borrow 9 million dollars and bet on half the current price.

Then, they dump their coins in Bitstamp, for half the price they bought for. The weak hands panic and sell their coins, some hodlers get out of their hideouts and throw some of their coins too. The price drops to half, the fund win the bet, and get 10 million dollars. They can use one of these to buy bitcoin again, so the price will pump one more time, the same way its pumping now, only green candles.

Now, I doubt one million dollars would make a difference, but these funds have millions at their disposal.

I dont know if the whales know about such mechanisms, but people should be informed about what the sharks can do using their instruments. They can margin-trade with higher values than in any bitcoin exchange, and they will settle it in cash. However, someone needs to buy the supply. Limiting the supply might reduce the shorting effects, and those funds can lose their bets and get rekt, but for this people should be hodling, even in the face of a quick fall.

Another question is how this manipulation will affect the altcoins.

The futures are only for bitcoin, but not for litecoin, dash, monero, etc. There might be one for ethereum in due time, but most altcoins will benefit if those hedge funds short bitcoin using leverage in cash. But as I say, they need to actually buy the coins and dump it in crypto exchanges to have a real effect on prices. Most bitcoins, however, are being hodled in cold wallets, so they cant buy all of them. Its not the same situation with gold, which is already controlled by governments and banks. So it is a diverse situation we should analyze carefully.

My guess is that these hedge funds might be buying bitcoin themselves, and hence the pumping, with so many green candles and no correction. Then they short it, using leverage to bet on a fall in CME, and thus making more money than a whale might do (due to the margin applied, and the ammount of money, as these hedge funds have millions at their disposal).

The question is: how low could it go, if they succeed? Where should we put buying orders? What would be the dip? And how can we instruct people who are buying now to hold it?

Also, how much would they affect the price, if most bitcoins are not on the exchanges?